Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA)
The Maria Sibylla Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA) is an international research centre at the University of Ghana in Legon, Accra. The institute promotes cooperation between Ghanaian academics and international colleagues across disciplinary and national borders.
MIASA is committed to reducing global asymmetries in knowledge production and strengthening collaboration between researchers from Anglophone and Francophone Africa. The overarching goal of MIASA is to increase the global visibility of research in the humanities, social sciences and cultural studies by researchers from sub-Saharan Africa. To achieve this goal, the research college awards scholarships to early career researchers and established academics working on the overarching topic of "Sustainable Governance". Governance is defined as the interplay of informal and formal rules for managing public affairs, embedded in the social, material and cultural practices of everyday life. MIASA's three main research areas under the main theme of sustainable governance are:
- Sustainability transformation
- Sustainable conflict management
- Sustainable democracy
The African-European scientific exchange of MIASA as the fourth Maria Sibylla Merian Centre for Advanced Studies is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), while the personnel, administrative and operating costs on site are borne by the University of Ghana.
Since 2023, MIASA has been organisationally affiliated with ACT, which is responsible for the administrative and content-related project management. The Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (FRIAS), together with five other consortium partners from Germany and France, has also been involved in setting up the research college at the University of Ghana since 2018 and continues to support MIASA.
